One hectare of reasonably fertile land produces 10 Koku of rice per year being tended by 4.5 farmers (each farmer consumes 1 Koku per year @ subsistence level, for surplus of 5.5 Koku per hectare per annum). Historical GDP per capita was in the $500-600 (1990) range under such regimes.
Producitivity of 2.2 Koku / Farmer assuming agriculture comprises 87% of GDP @ $550 / annum =
(550*.87) / 2.2 = $217 (1990) per Koku or $424 (2019) per Koku or 4,240 Ryo per Koku.
Eyeballing this number against my previous price chart, it seems reasonable enough, the average farmer generating between 7500 - 10,000 Ryo of income per year means food costs are between 40-60% of a peasant's income.
1) 4,240 Ryo per Koku with a net 5.5 Koku per Hectare per annum means net income per Hectare of 23,320 Ryo per year, so the capital value of that land will be between 233,200 and 466,400 Ryo.
2) There are 100 Hectares in 1 square kilometer, so if the pangolins can clear 1 sq. kilometer per day, they can generate 23,200,000 - 46,400,000 Ryo worth of value per day or 8.4 - 16.9 billion Ryo worth of value per year, subject to the limitations of available land and the need for security costs once cleared land expands far from Hidden Leaf. For reference, Fire Country's entire annual GDP is only 3.8 billion Ryo.
3) Of course, all this is subject to the availability of someone to either purchase or work the land, and the amount of land that actually receives 'free' protection from proximity to Hidden Leaf is likely less than 20 sq. kilometers. Still, feudal society placed enormous value upon land as one of the only capital assets available. Any noble or merchant clan with the liquidity would jump on the chance to purchase land at a discount, though you would likely have difficulty extracting more than a billion of active currency out of Hidden Leaf.
4) If the land cleared is the fertile Chakra land present in Hidden Leaf (@5 Kokus / Farmer), each Hectare instead produces (22.5 - 5) = 17.5 net koku of rice per annum meaning 74,200 Ryo per Hectare per annum, with a capital value about 3.5x what I previously quoted.
That is to say, if you can overcome the logistical issues inherent to the process, 'generating' fertile land in this manner would be by far the most incredibly profitable thing you could do, even if you had to sell at a 20, 30, or even 50% discount. Of course, even better would be to take out loans collateralized against the value of the land because then you could build generational wealth while still acquiring cash on hand to use.
A few issues to consider:
1) Any land not in the vicinity of Leaf will be less valuable as it incurs security costs to protect.
2) Getting peasants to work the land should not be too difficult in the short term (most labor required in rice production is concentrated in planting and harvest seasons, you can easily generate part-time labor by paying upgraded wages during harvest season and only require a skeleton crew the rest of the year; worst case you can use Naruto clones), but finding sources of liquidity that can actually purchase the land, even at a 50% discount, will be much harder past the first few thousand hectares.
3) In the medium run, massive overproduction of food will tank food prices, thus lowering the value of the land but also freeing up more of the populace for non-agricultural tasks (until child survival rates increase to absorb the expanded food supply). This can be avoided by stockpiling the food in storage scrolls, or food can be exported to neighboring countries in order to crush their economies as a form of indirect warfare. Or peacefully exported to Seventh Path allies to expand their populations.
4) You can get around liquidity issues somewhat by directly trading land for services or products, say 1 hectare (232,000 Ryo) for 1 month's worth of jounin service. This is similar to how medieval lords bought the loyalty of local combatants (knights) by making them landed knights. Rather than bribing people with currency, you can just directly bribe them with land.
All that said, if you can generate even 1 sq. kilometer of arable land in Leaf's vicinity via this method, that would produce at a minimum 23 million (72 million if Chakra soil) Ryo of value within one day, or 1.5x the annual income of a Sealmaster Jounin. It's worth researching whether there are such plots around Leaf (or Tanzaku / Otofuku Gai) available to be cleared.
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